


The Tempest

by ShitpostingfromtheBarricade



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Enjolras POV, First Person Perspective, I've been trying to give y'all a break but uhhhhhhhh, M/M, Missed Connections, done in december and finished editing in january, the sadfic I've been promising for months
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 11:45:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18777625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade/pseuds/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade
Summary: Enjolras reflects on the past year.Warnings:alcohol mention, sadness





	The Tempest

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, as always, to [PieceOfCait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PieceOfCait/pseuds/PieceOfCait) for beta-reading. <3

In January, you stumbled into your first meeting. It was mild outside, and the precautionary road salt felt like overkill.

I barely noticed you, to be honest. You sat in the back of the room and didn’t say anything, looking all but dead to the world. I tried to talk with you after the meeting, but you were already on your way out the door. I’ll admit, I didn’t try very hard: you didn’t seem overly enthused, and I didn’t expect to see you again.

The meeting notes say you showed up to the next meeting. I’ll have to take Combeferre’s word for it.

It had become something of a ritual by the end of February: you would show up, glassy-eyed and swigging from a bottle of something unlabeled. You would fall into a chair in the back corner. You would sit in silence. You would leave. An unsatisfactory routine, but you were there.

~

In March you started paying attention. The almanac had been calling for a drought this year, but irregular light showers kept those fears at bay.

You might have been paying attention before that, but March is when you started whispering a running commentary to whoever sat closest. Your table was a commotion of tittering, but it was in the back, and it didn’t bother anyone else. I was curious what you had to say, but I had bigger things to worry about than the opinions of some man who slinked in and out without contribution.

It was in the whispers that followed your departure that I finally came to learn your name.

~

The heckling began in May. Rain pattered hard on the roof, and the windows remained shuttered even in the warm temperatures.

So many questions. Some were constructive—the logistical ones were helpful—but most were sarcastic. Critical. 

It wasn’t bad. I answered a few using level tones, barely concealing the impatience that lay just below the surface before moving on. I deferred others to Combeferre or Courfeyrac, knowing they would require a more detailed explanation than I could provide. (and patience—much more of that)

Many were better ignored.

It seems unlikely that you studied all of those theories and contracts just to be difficult in meetings, but well, I now know you to be a man who throws his whole self into arbitrary projects determined on the whim of a passing moment.

You completely derailed four consecutive meetings before I became determined to ignore you once and for all—but I really couldn’t, not now. I didn’t respond, though my thoughts stirred with silent arguments I wouldn’t allow myself to give voice to.

You sat in the back corner, smug as ever, looking as if you knew exactly the storm I contained. These were the moments I hated the most.

~

July and August were violent. Pounding thunderstorms railed day in and day out.

Our arguments were formed to cut, to bruise, to bleed each other out.

I wanted to make you feel something, anything. I was shouting into the sky, into the void, into eternity. And you matched me, hit for hit and cut for cut. It was a dance we were born knowing, born to perform with one another. It felt like fire, like ecstacy, like truly breathing for the first time.

The topic didn’t matter, and it didn’t stay in the meeting, bleeding over everything. 

The lights would flicker as the tempest raged outdoors, but it felt like it was us, our passion and fury culminating to something beyond the human condition.

~

In September and October the aftermath began to settle. Hard rain needled into our cheeks and swallowed homes up from below.

September had brought with it fallout and debris, an odd layer of hush, but I remained ablaze with fury. I couldn’t stop. You made your apologies to our friends, but I wouldn’t accept them. I refused to regret the first thing in my life to make me feel alive.

Your debates became sloppier. You weren’t here to be converted or convert anymore, not with the same tenacity. It only made me angrier, strengthened my resolve. You were capable of so much more—more passion, more conviction, more belief. More.

Why wasn’t I enough for you anymore?

~

November was strangled and muted. There was a snowstorm that knocked everything out and kept people boarded up in their homes for days.

You came to the meetings (the ones we had) but didn’t say anything. There was no resistance anymore, and you were compliant and quiet and everything I had asked for but never wanted you to be. I asked you to stay after one day and I shouted, shouted ‘til I was hoarse, shouted ‘til the world spun and tears ran down my cheeks and your face blurred and you didn’t say a word. And after you offered to walk me home and I declined, declined your pity and declined that sad look you gave me as you closed the door behind you.

~

December is deafeningly quiet. The storms have abated to a miserable slushy rain that numbs through.

It’s silent.

It’s silent and I hate it and most of all I hate you.

**Author's Note:**

> The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.
> 
> I won't make you work for it this time: the temperature is Grantaire's affections, the precipitation is Enjolras's. 
> 
> Playing with perspectives again; did it work, or did it come off as fake-deep angsty drivel? Please tell me below or punch me in the metaphorical face publicly at my [tumblr](http://shitpostingfromthebarricade.tumblr.com).


End file.
